468 Hydrophobia, Lyssa, or Rabies 



The genius of Pasteur did not cease with the produc- 

 tion of immunity, but, we are glad to add, extended to the 

 kindred subject of therapy, and gave us a cure for hydro- 

 phobia. 



For the cure of infected cases exactly the same treatment 

 is followed as for the production of immunity. Indeed, the 

 treatment of the disease is simply the production of immu- 

 nity during the incubation period of the affection, so that 

 the subsequent course is prevented. The patient, to be 

 successfully treated, must come under observation early. 

 The treatment consists of the subcutaneous injection of 

 about 2 grams of an emulsion of a rabbit's spinal cord 

 which had been dried in a sterile bottle over caustic potash 

 for from seven to ten days. This beginning dose is not 

 increased in size, but each day the emulsion injected is 

 made from a rabbit's spinal cord that has not been so long 

 dried, until, when the twenty-fifth day of treatment is 

 reached, the patient receives 2 grams of emulsion of rab- 

 bit's spinal cord dried only three days, and is considered 

 immune or cured. 



This, in brief, is the theory and practice of Pasteur's 

 system of treating hydrophobia. It is entirely in keeping 

 with the ideas of the present time. When we remember 

 that the first application of the method to human medicine 

 was made October 26, 1885, six years before the time we 

 began to understand the production and use of antitoxins, 

 it becomes one of the most remarkable achievements of 

 medicine. 



Frantzius * has studied the bile of animals immunized 

 against rabies, and found it possessed of marked neutralizing 

 effect upon the rabies poison, so that when 0.2 gram of 

 bile and 0.2 gram of comminuted rabid rabbit's medulla 

 are simultaneously introduced beneath the dura of a healthy 

 rabbit, no disease occurs. The bile of healthy oxen, sheep, 

 hogs, etc., was also studied, but found to be without effect. 

 He concludes .that the bile is the most powerful rabies 

 antitoxin (?) yet discovered. 



The action of the bile in this combination probably cor- 

 responds with that discovered by Koch, who found that 

 the bile of cattle suffering from the Rinderpest, or South 

 African plague, exerted an immunizing power by which 

 healthy animals could be protected from the disease. 



* "Centralbl. f. Bakt. u. Parasitenk.," May 13, 1898, xxn, No. 18. 



